Sweet Potato

One of my favorite “single-person” meals is a baked sweet potato with about three tablespoons of butter on top. It’s the most delicious thing to eat when all I want to do is sit on the couch and watch a TV show. I love the act of eating something and watching something. In film school, I’d go to Chipotle right before class and sneak a burrito into the theater and sit in the back while watching some super artsy movie. It was very much against policy to eat in our school theater, but I couldn’t help it–I wanted to watch the movie AND eat.

Whenever I do go to the movies now, I always try and convince Josh to get a burrito before, but he always wins because his argument about sitting down at an actual restaurant like a real human versus sneaking burritos in my purse is a valid one, you know. Sooo…now you know my single-person/gossip TV meal. This gratin is a hella fancy version of that…sorta.

This is Thanksgiving-table worthy. It’s cheesy and slightly sweet and delicious.

I have a lot of dude friends who ask me for cooking advice. I usually get calls or texts that are like, “I have onions and milk and eggs in my fridge. What can I make?” And then I’m usually like, “Umm…nothing dude, sorry. You’re gonna need to drive to the store and then buy stuff and then come home and cook it.” They’re usually super bummed that I couldn’t turn those three ingredients into meatloaf for them.

Last week I was at a dinner and I was throwing out ideas for a dude friend to make and he was like, “Don’t give me ideas, I want specific instructions, written out, being dictated at me.”

Which I get. It kind of goes back to that notion that there aren’t really any bad cooks out there, just bad recipes, poorly written directions and bad food combo ideas.

This sweet potato baked with butter and cheese is a no-brainer. This is one of those recipes that you could just look at the pictures in this post and know how to assemble the thing and bake it.

This week mini-life lessons were just flying all around me. Wanna hear ’em?! Of course you.

1. If you go to the movies with a boy and he ends up eating ALL of your Sour Patch Kid–that you specifically wanted to buy yourself so you didn’t have to share–and you find yourself annoyed, he’s not the right dude for you. You should WANT to share your Sour Patch Kids, you know?!

2. I just watched Clueless for the bajillioninth time and just realized it came out in 1995…WHAT?! That’s SO long ago. How is it still so amazing?! How are the clothes still relevant?! How do I STILL know practically every line in that movie?!

3. I call my mom too much. The woman has been out of the country for a week and I’ve reached for my phone to text/call her, like, a million times. It makes me feel like an orphan. So now I just email incessantly. And I’ve tried to call my dad to talk…but he just presses ignore, I think.

4. Don’t get addicted to those San Pellegrino Aranciata orange soda things. I’ve bought two six-packs in the past two days and now I’m kinda poor. Don’t go poor because soda. That’s just silly. Everyone knows if you’re gonna go poor because of anything it should be because of shoes.